State Department of Health will be barred from revoking clinic’s license based on admitting privileges pending outcome of federal lawsuit

04.15.13 - (PRESS RELEASE) A federal court ruled today that Mississippi state officials cannot enforce a requirement designed to shut down the state's only
reproductive health care provider offering abortions-fully blocking the admitting privileges provision while a legal challenge to the unconstitutional
measure continues.

House Bill 1390, which was signed into law in April 2012, imposes arbitrary and medically unwarranted requirements that any physician performing abortions
in the state be a board certified or eligible obstetrician-gynecologist with admitting privileges at an area hospital.

Following a
lawsuit
brought by the Center for Reproductive Rights on behalf of the Jackson Women's Health Organization and Dr. Willie Parker, the law was
partially blocked
in July 2012—barring the state from imposing criminal and civil penalties on the clinic doctors and staff during the administrative process of attempting
to comply with the admitting privileges regulation.

Although all the doctors currently providing abortions to women at the Mississippi clinic are board-certified ob-gyns, the Center
requested a new preliminary injunction
after the physicians responsible for vast majority of the clinic's patients were not granted privileges by any of the hospitals in the area-with several
hospitals refusing to even process the physicians' applications, citing hospital policies on abortion care.

Today's ruling (PDF attached) from U.S. District Judge Daniel P. Jordan III blocks all remaining forms of enforcement of the admitting privileges
requirement, preventing the state Department of Health from revoking the clinic's license for failing to comply with the new regulations.

Said Nancy Northup, president and CEO of the Center for Reproductive Rights:
"Today's ruling provides the state's only abortion clinic and its doctors with critical protection to continue providing the safe and legal
reproductive health care to which Mississippi women are constitutionally entitled.
"While the women of Mississippi may be able to breathe a collective sigh of relief today, this fight is far from over. We will continue our work to see
this underhanded attempt to ban abortions in Mississippi struck down as a violation of women's constitutional reproductive rights.
"The battle doesn't stop at the defeat of this one law. Anti-choice politicians in Mississippi and in several states across the U.S. have already
introduced an onslaught of extreme and dangerous measures designed to erode women's constitutional rights and block their access to essential health
care.
"We will continue to defend the reproductive rights of all women relentlessly by exposing the terrible harm that this and all laws that seek to
undermine women's fundamental rights can cause in countless women's lives."

In issuing his order today, Judge Jordan noted that enforcing the admitting privileges requirement would "result in a patchwork system where constitutional
rights are available in some states but not others."

The Jackson Women's Health Organization has served women and families in Mississippi for 17 years, and has been the sole reproductive health care provider
offering abortion in the state since 2002. The next nearest clinics for Mississippi residents are approximately three hours away, with most neighboring
states requiring a mandatory 24-hour waiting period.